Approach

Disruptive Innovation

Capturing the benefits of advanced reactors on the needed timeline requires an emphasis on “disruptive innovation” for deployment and utilization of the technology.

Advanced reactors build on the safety record of existing nuclear power facilities to provide even safer risk profiles. This risk reduction, coupled with modern monitoring and control technology, provides the opportunity to reshape how nuclear technology is developed, regulated, deployed, and operated. Changing how advanced reactors are pursued and viewed is important to achieve leveraged benefits—including easing deployment challenges, accelerating deployments, and increasing cost- competitiveness, and reducing cost and schedule risk—all while increasing safety and reliability.The opportunities to change the game in advanced reactors are related to the elements listed in the preceding section, but they are also important strategic enablers themselves.

Important opportunities to change the game and enable the deployment of advanced nuclear technologies include:

Most importantly, changing the game involves shifting industry paradigms and practices in a sustained manner that encourages innovation, further strengthens the industry, and increases the benefits and utilization of advanced reactors.

DESIGN AND ENGINEERING

Increased standardization in designs, achieving the goal of “design and license once, use many”; a limited portfolio of designs each tailored to needed use-cases, reducing the need for use-specific designs and licensing, and improving the business case for the application; large and ample design margins that facilitate and enable wide deployment envelopes, both for potential sites and potential uses; a risk-informed approach to quality assurance that avoids undesired bleed-over of detailed nuclear quality requirements into the non-nuclear systems and equipment; and importantly, the design, licensing, and operational separation of the nuclear energy portion of a facility supplying energy from the non-nuclear portion using that energy, enabling significant cost savings and increased operational flexibility.

REGULATORY REVIEWS AND LICENSING

Increased efficiency of regulator reviews through risk-informed approaches; effective and agile reviews of diverse technologies and use-applications; and NRC review schedules that reliably and predictably support mission objectives. The United States’ goal shall be to license advanced reactors, inclusive of micro- and modular reactors, that have previously been approved, in six months or less from submittal to approval, with the understanding that initial applications of a design and early applications may take longer as the regulators streamline their processes. The recent executive orders also create a pathway by using DOE’s streamlined authorization process for pilot and test reactors that can directly inform and enable a more efficient, predictable NRC pathway for subsequent commercial deployments.

Canada continues to work on reducing regulatory burden, improving efficiency, and clarifying Indigenous consultation standards and policy direction. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) timeline for the first license for nuclear projects is approximately two years, barring obstructive extenuating circumstances. Industry is advocating for removal of nuclear projects from the Impact Assessment Act (IAA) that adds 3-5 years to the process.

DEPLOYMENT

Shift from an approach of “procure and construct” complex facilities to “manufacture and assemble components, then install them in a constructed structure”; implement a risk-informed and graded approach to oversight and quality assurance; and inculcate a culture that embraces the value of proactive project management and risk mitigation rather than simply having activities that are done on the project.

OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE

Greatly reduced facility staffing levels and maintenance costs; streamlined qualification requirements for staff through a graded and risk-informed, performance-based (RIPB) approach; and maintenance philosophies consistent with industrial facilities for comparable systems and components that still deliver required levels of equipment reliability.

OWNERSHIP AND BUSINESS MODELS

Enabling and reliably delivering benefits to “new to nuclear” owners; reducing the hurdles to ownership of an advanced reactor facility; and creating the opportunity for “energy as a service.”

Capturing these disruptive innovations to create opportunities and “change the game” are requisites for success. Without achieving these big picture and cultural shifts as part of the near-term and mid-term deployments, long-term success and large-scale deployments are unlikely.

Rising to the Occasion

The success of advanced reactors relies on evolving, strengthening, and sustaining industry culture. The industry’s pursuit of operational excellence has served the industry well; excellence is needed across the activities required for successful commercialization and the high levels of safety and reliability, which are hallmarks of the industry, must be maintained. To achieve the vision of success, leverage the benefits of advanced technology, and build confidence and credibility, some elements of the culture must continue to evolve.

Examples of evolution that will enable enhanced effectiveness include:

Nuclear safety and radiological hazards are seen as normal industrial activities and are treated with commensurate levels of quality assurance
Factory-made plants and plant modules are commonplace
Industry-regulator interactions should be efficient, RIPB, and technology-inclusive
External stakeholders that may view nuclear technology through different lenses engage openly, build understanding, and strengthen public trust through transparent communication
Education and communications on the contributions, accomplishments, and impacts of advanced reactors are proactive with the public and Indigenous groups
In Canada, consideration of the United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples in nuclear projects and policy
Standardized advanced reactor designs are able to leverage a more predictable licensing process, reduced construction timelines, and stable supply chains
Government support unlocks private investment to accelerate commercialization
The nuclear industry builds lasting trust and momentum by setting clear, achievable milestones and demonstrating consistent performance

These culture evolutions are needed to achieve success; enabling and sustaining the changes is a fundamental role of industry leadership.

Establish, Advance, Expand

To enable and ensure the needed timeliness and to build both capability and the needed confidence, the industry’s commercialization plans must be framed to allow a realistic, phased, and risk-managed approach to deploying advanced nuclear technology.

More specifically:

Establish wins on early mover and early finisher deployments—both first-of-a-kind (FOAK) and fast followers—to build a firm foundation and increase stakeholder confidence
Advance from the established foundation to include multiple projects, deployments, and uses of advanced nuclear technology
Expand to deliver at needed scale to meet the demands of the future energy landscape

This EAE strategy provides important benefits, including:

Helping to ensure the most important accomplishments are achieved on the needed timelines
Prioritizing industry efforts and actions
Assisting in managing stakeholder expectations of what will be accomplished and when
Most importantly, avoiding an early “all-in” approach of attempting too much, too soon, and at the same time

A primary focus is on the industry first establishing a firm foundation, and while establishing it, to pursue a level of simplicity such that wins can be captured and the first deployments will occur as planned. Attempting to take on too many complexities or attempting to expand too widely prior to establishing the foundation of capability and the wins that build confidence threatens delays and costs to the individual projects. These delays jeopardize the overall industry deployment and raise the likelihood of missing the needed time window for deployments. The EAE strategy is intended to provide the framework to enable sustained and large success.

Although the high-level EAE approach has a clear end goal of deployments to meet the demands of 2050, the phased EAE strategy and approach also apply to lower-level accomplishments and workstreams that the industry must advance to achieve those longer term deployments.

Examples include:

Scale of deployment: Transitioning from FOAK and early-mover projects with offset intervals to multiple projects in parallel and to widespread deployment of a design.
NRC and CNSC processes: In the United States, streamlining the known Parts 50 and 52 processes, crafting an optimized Part 53 with the NRC, fast tracking licensing of DOE–authorized reactors, and realizing the role that timely NRC reviews have in accelerating deployment. In Canada, the CNSC is participating in the federal government’s red tape reduction plan aimed at reducing regulatory burden.
NRC and CNSC throughput: Increasing the efficiency and throughput of regulatory reviews, advancing from FOAK applications to multiple applications (or fleet application) of previously approved designs and to predictable reviews of many different types of technologies at multiple application volumes.
Design standardization: Creating FOAK designs that balance the speed to market and market coverage with reliability and, after deployment of a large number of standard, first-series of the designs, consider enhancing the design.
Regulatory alignment: NRC and CNSC collaborating on aligning their regulatory review processes to enable expedited reviews and capacity to accept and use each other’s work.

While moving through the EAE phased approach for these discrete topics, the industry must also be continually strengthening and expanding its capacity—in the spirit of the EAE strategy—in important areas identified in the roadmap, such as project management performance, supply chain robustness, and recruiting and training the needed workforce of the future.

Finally, while executing the roadmap, the industry must always look beyond the current phase and proactively address the needs of subsequent phases. It must also focus on advancing the lower level workstreams, not simply the high-level achievements.

De-risking Projects for Owners

The nuclear industry is beginning to see commitments from end users to build an initial orderbook of advanced reactors.

In the United States, end users are signing offtake agreements and investing in advanced reactor vendors while states, such as New York, are committing to add new nuclear capacity. The parallel goals of accelerating initial deployments, flattening the demand peak for new reactors at a sustainable level of new plants coming online each year, and enabling an early foundation for success will require the industry to achieve near-term and mid-term successes that build the confidence of key stakeholders internal and external to the industry and establish a record of success that the industry can deploy advanced reactors to meet customer expectations.

Customers of advanced reactors will remain cautious until a firm foundation is established and early mover and early finisher successes strengthen industry expertise and capability. Prior to the first projects being completed, customers, investors, and other stakeholders will need to gain confidence through the reduction and mitigation of first-mover risks. Developing advanced nuclear project deployment plans that achieve an equitable sharing of risk among customers, suppliers, contractors, financial institutions, and other stakeholders, including financial targets and models that result in cost-competitive products, along with defining the companion project execution and governance models, is a critical need. Extensive numbers of lessons learned from evaluations, reports, and recommendations from previous deployment of nuclear technology are available to owners, technology vendors, constructors, contractors, and other stakeholders. These recommendations were all developed with the mission to derisk future projects. It is an imperative in the strategy that industry and owners use these valuable resources.

Customers of advanced reactors will remain cautious until a firm foundation is established and early mover and early finisher successes strengthen industry expertise and capability.

One additional area in which work is required to derisk future projects is the development of a better understanding of back-end costs. Demonstrating a clear definition of how used nuclear fuels will be managed and how the plants will be decommissioned will be important to ensuring the successful licensing of these projects. Because some of the waste forms resulting from advanced reactors will be very different than what has previously been the case, there is currently not a wide range of information from prior deployments. Two international initiatives are underway and should have useful results in the next three to five years. The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has launched a project called Waste Integration for Small Advanced Reactor Design (WISARD) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has engaged the international community in a cooperative research project called Challenges, Gaps, and Opportunities for Managing Spent Fuel from SMRs (COGS). The U.S. and Canadian interests are engaged in both efforts, which are expected to yield better defined information on the back end that will be useful to advanced reactor developers in North America.

Early Success to Build a Foundation and Confidence

To ensure more opportunities for and delivery on wins, increased confidence in the industry’s ability to deliver among stakeholders and customers is critical. To build this confidence, the industry needs to deliver on the work it is doing, which, realistically, will occur only if wins have been achieved (and orders received).

The solution to this chicken-and-egg challenge (need work to build stakeholder and customer confidence but do not have opportunity to do work without stakeholder and customer confidence) necessitates the strategy to build wins and strengthen the industry in a sequential, incremental manner that also continually derisks projects for owners. This confidence factor and how it is developed are also key in evolving the culture of the industry to succeed and thus in the successful delivery of nuclear technology.

Increasing stakeholder confidence is particularly important from a business case and project definition perspective. By building increased confidence, there will be more orders and investment in advanced reactors, more projects will move through the deployment cycle and provide important lessons, more challenges will be overcome, and the industry will be best positioned and prepared to meet its full potential. Securing early and frequent wins is a fundamental need for establishing a foundation of industry success.